Microstamp inventor chats

Too late for the editorial we did on firearms microstamping, but worth the time nonetheless, I got a call back from one of the inventors of the technology, Todd Lizotte.

Lizotte’s take on the value of the technology is that one of the areas in which it can make a real difference is in discouraging straw purchasers — people who buy guns for other people. The idea is, if you’re going to be on the hotseat when shell casings from that gun are traced back to you after a murder, you’d think twice about being a front for someone else.

Lizotte acknowledged what we observed in the piece — that the technology can be thwarted — though he said it’s not as easy as people suggest. He told the story of a former law enforcement official who was at one of his presentations and claimed that he could take a microstamp off a firing pin in seconds. Lizotte says he offered to let him do that with the gun he’d brought; the man declined, saying he wasn’t familiar with the weapon. Even after Lizotte stripped it for him, the man was reluctant. Finally, he provided the man diamond sandpaper and told him to have at it for as long as he felt necessary. When the man was sure he’d eliminated the stamp, they tested it on a firing range. The breech stamp was untouched (the man was unaware there was one), and a radial bar code, which is more to the edge of the pin, was intact. From the bar code, they were able to derive the same information as the stamp.

Lizotte agreed that a sophisticated shooter is going to know all this and would likely just avoid the problem by using a revolver or unstamped gun. But, he maintains, the average criminal isn’t always so careful, and hasn’t significantly changed over the years to match the advances in forensic science. And while there’s no doubt that this won’t directly lead to shooters in cases of stolen guns, he sees this as one more tool in law enforcement’s belt.

We talked about marking every cartridge at the manufacturing level, which some argue gets around the limitation of stamping only some guns. He said it would be a logistical nightmare, requiring altogether new recordkeeping by manufacturers and dealers.

As for the scenario some opponents of microstamping have suggested — that criminals will go around to shooting ranges to gather up casings and salt them at crime scenes, Lizotte was doubtful. Beyond needing to be sure that the “fake” casings match the bullets they plan to use, they would need to be mindful at the scene of the pattern they drop them in. In the same way that investigators use the location of casings to recreate what happened at a crime scene, they could also use other evidence to determine that casings were planted.

Finally, the reason I’d called him originally was to ask him about the patent issues. California tells me it hasn’t implemented the law in part because there are problems with the patent, which Lizotte had publicly stated he would release (the attorney general’s office also didn’t get around to drafting the necessary regulations this year for a law passed in 2007). He said he has in fact done that, but the California AG’s office is still not satisfied. He opines that California officials are moving slowly on implementation more because of the politics than technical and legal issues.

If you want even more on Lizotte and microstamping, the nicely named Cogito Ergo Geek blog did an extensive interview via e-mail with him in 2008.

Jay Jochnowitz

One Response

“Lizotte’s take on the value of the technology is that one of the areas in which it can make a real difference is in discouraging straw purchasers — people who buy guns for other people. The idea is, if you’re going to be on the hotseat when shell casings from that gun are traced back to you after a murder, you’d think twice about being a front for someone else.”

Applying this logic, couldn’t the same be said about the COBIS system? I don’t recall any published evidence that this has had any impact on straw purchases let alone a single successful conviction. Additionally, as routinely spouted by Bloomberg and his cohorts, the majority of illegal guns used in the commission of crimes in NY come from outside of the state. Without uniform application of this law nationwide (in no way am I advocating this), the micro-stamping law will have no meaningful impact on solving crime or crime reduction.